


Touch my own skin (and hope that I'm still breathing)

by winterysomnium



Series: Catlad/Red X AU [1]
Category: DC AU, DCU - Comicverse, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Suck it up, hot stuff."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch my own skin (and hope that I'm still breathing)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a lyric from the song "Lights" by Ellie Goulding.

Catlad might be smiling like he didn’t lose a thing but Tim can’t, Tim can’t bring himself to properly dry himself and half out of his uniform Tim is nearly not there, nearly not the boy Jason curls his shoulders into at nights but with the goggles still around his neck and the zipper still across his chest the only civilian, the only Timmers things are his bare feet, the soap slippery fingers and the hints scattered across his face, eyes and mouth and dirt.

Jason sighs, slides his mask back down his neck, curls it under his jaw like it’s less a necessity and more a skin, a person he wants to be even if Tim is the one that’s so split, so separate he can’t connect again, can’t relate to himself but he adores Jason through both of them and Catlad is happy where Tim is sad, where they’re the antidotes to each other, where they never meet but here; in something that happened to them both.

(Something that maybe drives Catlad to be a happier Tim, to be the pull from Tim’s triggers, to be the part of Tim that will grow into Tim again; some day, some year, some place.)

Today; they stitch a seam. 

(And tomorrow two will burst.)

“Suck it up, hot stuff,” Jason murmurs and if there’s hope that Tim didn’t hear it sizzles out when Tim flinches and _damn it all_ , that was something he didn’t mean the way Tim thinks, the way Catlad can’t believe and it was something for the future, it was something for twenty minutes later and yeah he’s been dealing with this soaked, with this drenched and drained Timmers for hours and he only got the solution _now_ , only knows the way to approach Tim from the way he remembers seeing but it’s the thing Tim really wants and the thing Catlad needs and so Jason turns and leaves and jumps out their kitchen window, the fastest way to the street being down, down and sideways and inside, inside to the heat of insomniac stores, inside to capture the heat the way he can, inside so he can burst out again, so he can be as careful as he needs.

(Inside, even if the outside greets him even heavier than before.)

It eats up five minutes.

Five minutes before he sees Timmers sit on that couch like he had from the early morning, Catlad somewhere hidden in the sound of leather and metal zippers and Red X hopes he’s doing this right, that he’s learned something from the way Selina comforts, from the way she calls every Wednesday and how they visit, visit as boys and as thieves and as something human, something that breathes and feels and knows that it does, knows that it's there.

He sits down onto the table, onto the bare, dark wood to take up the spot Tim was staring at and when he looks up, the Styrofoam cup is already between Tim’s fingers, hot with coffee and the foreign, familiar scents Tim likes and Catlad pretends to like more, warm all the way through his fingertips and Tim’s palms attach, don’t reach for the straw as Tim bites his mouth; he’s wary and confused and still.

He’s all that stays there, stays for the space and for the drink and for Jason until Red X takes off his damp, night-soaked mask, flicks Tim’s forehead and says, the things between them more liquid than the coffee, hotter than the heat:

“Like I said, Timmers: suck it up. And then tell me what’s wrong.”


End file.
